Ursula, Under (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ON A CRYSTALLINE, perfectly blue morning in June, after a day of angry pewter skies and of sheeting, driving rain, we enter our story..." (more)
Key Phrases: jade blossom, rye farmer, foreign cargoes, Qin Lao, Ming Tao, Wong Lin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

Think Big Novel and visions of sweeping, intersecting narratives, multiple points of view and a kaleidoscopic collection of characters -- the wider the spectrum, the better -- swirl before you. Readers who wade in might let out an "Aha!" or two of pleasure as they figure out the inner logic.

For first-time novelist Ingrid Hill, such flashy artifice is passé. Ursula, Under -- Hill's great big novel -- ditches organizational showiness in favor of a directness that puts all the weight of judgment on stories of ancients and moderns, waifs and royals, the ascetic and the damned. Primarily the tale of Ursula Wong, a 2½-year-old who has fallen down an abandoned mine shaft, the novel shows Hill is up to the formidable task of delivering on her unpretentious modus operandi.

The author gives away her story's artistic raison d'etre in the first 13 pages. Ursula is the much-loved, over-protected daughter of a multiracial couple trying to offer her the solid home they were denied as children. The three of them live in a trailer in Michigan's rural upper peninsula.

Her father, Justin Wong, a half-Chinese/half-Polish gutter cleaner and musician, carries the sting of his itinerant, harmonica-playing father's abandonment. Annie Maki, Ursula's librarian mom, escaped from an alcoholic father not long after her loving mother died. Annie, forced to use a walker because of a bike accident when she was 10, is searching deeper for her family's American roots. She scopes out former mining towns in the peninsula to get a firsthand look at where her great-grandfather, a Finnish émigré, died in a cave-in long ago.

During one of Annie's quests, history possibly repeats itself, or at least rhymes in the most discordant way imaginable. Ursula runs alongside a remote road and decides to chase a deer into the woods; then, in a blink, she's gone "like a penny into the slot of a bank." At this point the author seemingly drops both shoes, stopping just short of metafiction to make her story's point transparent and then explain how she will tell it. "Why are they wasting all that money and energy on a goddamn half-breed trailer-trash kid?" asks Jinx Muhlenberg, the story's malevolent floozy, as Ursula's plight becomes fodder for 24-hour national news networks. Annie unknowingly answers her: "So many generations, back into history and then prehistory, all concentrated into this one little girl." As Ursula is involuntarily planted deep within Michigan, the story becomes her roots, a genealogy of the characters who all "concentrated" to become her.

With surprise and artifice out of the way, Hill instead astounds with her ability to meld simply and beautifully told stories, stories with an air of fable about them, with contemporary tales of the Wongs and Makis. Latter-day stories contain glints of Ursula's long-ago forebears -- Justin inherited a crooked finger from a Chinese alchemist who lived two millennia ago, for example.

But Hill knows that history is the triumph of narrative. She pours most of her energies into painstakingly reconstructing historical sets -- a Chinese town, a Swedish king's court, an immigrants' mining camp. She then peoples them with vibrant, thoughtful beings who remind us that so much of what troubles the soul today -- religious searching, the quest for truth, the brutality and greed of humanity -- long vexed the minds of our forefathers.

Some of the characters would work as main players in novels of their own. There's Marjatta Karajamaki, another Finnish émigré to Michigan, who bakes cakes with ground glass to entice rats to their deaths and whose newborn appears dead for minutes before she commands it to life, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There's Violeta, a foundling Finnish girl who, through absurd circumstance, becomes the best friend of a Swedish princess and is then cast off because of the princess's jealousy of her. And there's Ming Tao, a disabled Chinese girl who frustrates her father and a Jesuit missionary with her endless questioning and rich intellect. Her method of insemination -- by means of a "gift" from a priest and a meat baster -- is one of many examples of Hill's belief in "miracles" and unlikely births that are neither evangelical nor hokey.

Ultimately, Hill embraces a crucial Big Novel component. Her book asks, and at length answers, a Big Question: What is a life worth? The miracle of Ursula, Under is that it reminds us that while a good story -- told with all the weight of the world and through skeins of time -- might not be as indispensable as a beloved child, it can relate the value of that child, and through its narrative gift help us recall why life is worth the trouble.

Reviewed by Michael Anft
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Hill's enchanting debut novel spans more than 2,000 years and is brimming with an engaging cast of characters. Annie and Justin Wong, who live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, are on a day trip exploring the area where Annie's Finnish great-grandfather died in a mine collapse in 1926. Suddenly their only child, Ursula, disappears down an abandoned shaft, setting off a monumental rescue attempt and accompanying media frenzy. The author leaves that predictable plot behind, focusing instead on the young girl's many ancestors--those with the most interest in her safe return. A second-century B.C.E. Chinese alchemist, a deaf Finnish peasant living in 700 C.E., the child born to a crippled Chinese girl in the 1600s, and more--"a crowd of all the people whose blood and lives went into this little girl," brought vividly to life. In an elaborate "six degrees of separation" game, the author reveals centuries-old ties between relatives of both Annie and Justin, creating a magically entertaining, poetic, and heartfelt look at the often overlooked significance of extended family. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 476 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143035452
• ISBN-13: 978-0143035459
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,102 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking debut in scope, style and story, June 29, 2004

By	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ursula, Under (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

Hill's debut novel is at once sprawling and tightly plotted, broad in scope and narrow in focus. It takes place over the course of one endless, terrifying day in the life of 2-year-old Ursula Wong's parents, and encompasses some of the thousands of years and generations that went into the making of that child.

Annie and Justin Wong are on a rare outing with their daughter in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Annie, a librarian, has developed an interest in her ancestors and they are exploring the area where her Finnish great-grandfather lived before his death in a 1926 mine explosion. They stop for a picnic and spot a deer in the trees. Ursula goes after it. It's a charmed moment: a lovely June day, a delighted child, happy, relaxed parents.

"She gives them a sign in mime: Watch me. Ursula's every gesture seems meant for the comedic stage. She is a natural. She tiptoes toward the treeline. The deer disappears deeper into the forest, as silent as breath. Ursula puts on a burst of speed, silent herself, looking back at Justin and Annie, steps into the trees, and disappears from sight. The only sound is an astonished tiny intake of breath from Ursula as she goes down, like a penny into the slot of a bank, disappeared, gone."

As Justin races off to find help and Annie cannot yet take in what we already know - that Ursula has fallen down an unmapped ventilation shaft - the narrative veers, following Annie's anguished thought: "So many generations, back into history and then prehistory, all concentrated into this one little girl."

At first Hill drops back only a generation. We meet Justin's warm-hearted mother, Mindy Ji, who never stopped loving Joe Cimmer, the musician who left them both when Justin was little older than Ursula. We glimpse Annie's father, an abusive drunk who probably killed her mother while Annie was in the hospital after a hit and run accident that left her legs permanently damaged. We've already met the drunk who hit Annie, though we don't know that yet - Hill, the omnipresent, omniscient authorial voice, parcels out her knowledge, creating a pattern of pieces that merge into a seamless whole at the end.

Hill drops back further to visit key ancestors Justin and Annie will never be (consciously) aware of, in a series of precisely named chapters that alternate with the ongoing scene around the mineshaft.

"The Alchemist's Last Concubine," introduces Qin Lao, a third-century BC alchemist who, in a happy accident of fate and generosity, has his first and only child in his 79th year. A few centuries later "The Caravan-Master's Lieutenant," a deaf man with a captivating gift for storytelling, is smitten by a deaf Finnish girl, who has thus far been indulged by a doting father in her desire not to marry.

"A Wastrel Killed by a Snail," Chen Bing, fathers a daughter in the California gold fields iin 1851 before he meets his freakish - and timely end. For, had he lived, he would have sexually abused his daughter, causing her eventually to run from him into the path of a runaway horse and be killed at the age of ten, "stopping the lineage of Ursula Wong - who would of course never have come to be - then and there."

Hill's authorial voice often interrupts these brief, but fully realized life histories to make connections across the centuries, or share information unknowable to the character concerned. This authorial omniscience reveals the patterns visible only at a distance and emphasizes the essential role of each haphazard, accidental life in the intricate and exacting fabric of history.

Hill's language is rich, whimsical and visual. Her voice combines a playful, comic sense of omniscience with the intimate joys and tragedies of individual lives. An ambitious, successful debut which leaves the reader with a sense of satisfied wonder.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ursula, Over and Above, December 7, 2006

By	Zinta Aistars "Writer & Editor" (Portage, MI United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

If I have for some time now been reading books to illuminate the meaning of life, here was a break to turn that coin on its other side and ask of its value. To ponder meaning, after all, assumes life has value. And if it does, are all of our lives to be valued equally?

When 2 1/2-year-old Ursula falls into an old mine shaft in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, media and curiosity seekers swarm the scene, and not one alone asks about the mixed race child born of poor parents - is she worth saving? How much investment and effort is one such child worth?

Ingrid Hill, in this debut novel, explores the question of one life's value by going back into history, traveling the long and complex limbs of a family tree, to an ancestry of two thousand years and a genealogy that contains within it royalty and peasants, slaves and alchemists, immigrants and miners. Little Ursula's ethnic roots wind through China, Sweden, Finland, Poland, traveling over land and oceans, passing through the courts of royalty with as much intrigue as through the tents and barracks of immigrants, until the two branches of her parents' families, the Wongs and the Makis, finally meet to create this child. In one tiny child: the spans of millenia and the bloodlines of countless generations. Such is the value of one human life, that it contains the lives of many, and these many are intertwined by all who have ever lived, all across the globe, a concentration of all humanity and all the characteristics and traits, good and evil, therein. Every life, we soon see, is a vessel holding all that has been and all that will be.

To hold so many threads in the plotting of a novel such as this, author Ingrid Hill has accomplished a no less than amazing feat, her writing skill already at such a level of artistry that it is nearly impossible to imagine how she might top this stellar debut. Yet, realizing what value, what hidden treasure and untold promise our bloodlines may contain, why not? Indeed, every stop along the way in this novel beckons a novel of its own.

I first picked up this book for the very simple reason that its story frame was out of the Keweenaw, a place I too once lived, my own storyline weaving through the area, holding now my own personal bits and pieces of hidden treasure. But if my expectations were simple enough, seeking but a pleasurable revisiting to the warming of nostalgia, Ingrid Hill astounded me with her range and reach, her skill and her sense of beauty combined with deeper meaning, winning me over with a standing ovation by the turning of the final page. "Ursula, Under" proved to be not only an excellent story well told, but a masterpiece of literary artistry that now tops my list of all-time favorite books.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating interwoven life stories, November 27, 2005

By	Mavis Biesanz "Finnish-American-Costa Rican" (San Antonio de Escazu, Costa Rica) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Ursula, Under" is rich in wonderful stories of long ago and far away, leading through time and space to Upper Michigan in 2003.
And leading to one special life - that of a little girl who falls into an abandoned mine shaft. Stories of Ursula Wong's Chinese and Finnish ancestors are interwoven with nail-biting accounts of the gathering of rescue workers, TV crews, and gawkers.
Hill's consistent use of the present tense gives her stories a sense of forward movement - often urgent movement. Her clever interweaving and her reminders to the reader tie together times past and present, as well as far-apart places: China, Finland, Michigan.
Reading the first chapter, I fell in love with 2 1/2-year-old Ursula and her parents - Justin Wong, a Chinese-American gutter repairman and musician, and his Finnish-American wife, Annie Maki, a librarian. Then in Chapter Two, the author takes us back to ancient China, and the (over-long) story of a Chinese alchemist. Here the author's symphonic repetition of themes begins. Ursula has followed a deer into the woods; Qin Lao wonders at the deer that has somehow entered his walled garden. She falls into an abandoned copper mine; he works with cinnabar (the source of quicksilver) from a nearby mine.
In later chapters we meet other ancestors in the "cloud of witnesses" cheering on Ursula's rescuers: Deaf-mutes, like Qin Lao's servant Zhou(who just might be the true ancestor). Another foundling left, like Qin Lao, in a basket at a rich man's door. A brilliant Chinese princess with useless legs, whose Jesuit tutor helps her conceive the child she wants. Finnish immigrants working the iron and copper mines of Upper Michigan.
On occasion the author packs too many experiences into one life story, straining the reader's credulity (which he has had to abandon in any case to appreciate the book). For example: Chapter 8, "A Foundling at the Court." While Shakespeare is writing plays in England, a Finnish foundling grows up as the playmate and classmate of the future queen of Sweden, daughter of the great King Gustavus Adolphus. When they are twelve years old, the princess, jealous of Violeta's beauty, banishes her. She becomes a children's teacher in a wealthy household, marries the son's tutor, sets sail for the New World with him, and is pregnant and widowed when she lands in New Sweden. A huge multilingual Ethiopian, recently freed from slavery, takes her under his wing. She settles down long enough to bear the son who will become Ursula's ancestor - and to establish the fact that Finns brought the design of the frontier log cabin to America.
A disaster sends her back to Finland with her little son and their Ethiopian protector. There she claims her dead husband's estate. When her son is four years old, she is discovered to have leprosy and is banished to a leper island. To escape the attentions of a leprous man, she hitches two huskies to a sled and crosses to the mainland, where she freezes to death. Her story is a novel within a novel.
"Ursula, Under" appeals to all the senses. We see, hear,feel, taste. We shiver - with fear or cold. We drown. We hear symphonies that will be written many centuries later. Reader, allow yourself time. Not only because the book is long, but also because it must be savored attentively, like a great symphony. Suspend disbelief; accept dreams and visions. You will be richly rewarded.




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